Consumer behaviours and attitudes towards the active world

It is hard to believe that it’s now almost an entire year ago since we first went into lockdown and the world as we knew it became unfathomably different. For the participation sports industry in particular, it has meant organisations have been continually reviewing and adapting their strategy to suit the changing landscape like never before, and LimeLight has been leading that innovation!

With the boom in virtual fitness due to gyms, group activities and of course, mass participation events, being largely unavailable for the past year, we have been keen to investigate the viability of providing our own online fitness community and how it would specifically enhance the experience of our consumers.

As an organisation, we believe that a customer-centric approach is key to success, as outlined here by my colleague Jonathan Whittall. A market research project which I was delighted to be involved in last month has certainly attested to that pledge.

The LimeLight Sports Club division of the company recently reached out to its consumers to find out about their behaviours and attitudes towards both mass participation events and online fitness communities, and how the latter could enhance the former. The findings have been fascinating to review, so I thought I would share a few key areas of research and some thoughts on what they might mean in practice.

1.    Live and virtual event participation

• Of the 2,389 respondents to the survey, more than two-fifths (44%) have never taken part in a virtual event. It is undeniable that virtual events have served a real purpose in the last 12 months to boost motivation, fitness and fundraising to name a few. However, we cannot ignore that a significant portion of our audience aren’t typically engaged in virtual offerings, so moving forward the virtual offering might be used to enhance, rather than replace our live events.
• 35% of our audience participate in 6 or more events in a typical year. With this averaging out to around one event at least every eight weeks and given our growing portfolio of events, there is a great opportunity to reward our audience’s loyalty.
• Over half (51%) of those surveyed typically take part in events with either one or two other people. It is therefore important to factor in the social element of events, with scope to improve our offering to those who participate in small groups (such as group discounts and rewards for car-sharing) and offering a bespoke online community that allows groups of friends to support each other while training.

2.    Challenge preparation

• The audience surveyed originated from running, duathlon, triathlon and cycling event databases and it was fascinating to see which sports/activities are incorporated into pre-event training. No matter the type of event they are training for, most of our audience incorporate a great deal of cross training into their regimes, with 65% incorporating walking, 39% being regular gym goers and 47% of those who take part in cycling events regularly going running. The diversity of activity shown by our audience gives us a great opportunity to diversify our own offering beyond our traditional events, perhaps investigating walking challenges and partnering with gym brands.
• When asked which sources our audience use to look for their next challenge, the majority (59%) rely on personal recommendations and a similar amount (54%) would like a tool that recommends events to them based on factors personalised to them, such as their fitness level and previous events they have completed. When looking at our own potential online community offering, there is a clear appetite for personal and tailored support to nudge our audience towards their next challenge.

3.    Value of an online fitness community

• Respondents were asked to rate various elements of online fitness communities with a level of importance. These fell into three major categories, namely: interactions with other community members, training content and member-only offers. Of the top three most valued elements across the board, all came from the training content category, the highest ranked of these being the Strava-like ‘access to statistics about your own training’ (77% valued this highly).
• The most valued member-only offers element was the provision of exclusive discounts for members, particularly from partners, which shows the added-value that partnering with other brands would bring to a project like this.
• The three least valued were all around interactions with other members, with the potential for in-person meet ups with other members valued by only 24%, showing that people are less interested in interacting with other participants not already known to them and more in how they can improve their own training and gain exclusive access to offers.

These survey findings have been fascinating to unpick and suggest to me that there is a great opportunity for LimeLight sports to occupy an informative space as a community, with key USPs being the authority of our knowledge and collaboration with value-adding brands. This past year has really shaken up the fitness and events industry and, despite all the obvious hardships and challenges we have faced, it has opened up space for exciting new conversations and innovations. We plan to be the ones operating at the cutting edge of these exciting areas, so stay tuned…